The present invention relates to a process and an apparatus for handling driving belts in an automated manner during the manufacturing of such belts.
In greater detail, the process and apparatus in question are used in factories where the driving belt production takes place, in order to transfer the belts, according to a predetermined order, between different work stations such as for example apparatuses for quality control and/or belt packaging.
It is known that in the manufacture of driving belts in general, belts obtained from an axially elongated cylindrical tubular sleeve made of elastomeric material incorporating textile reinforcement structures as a result of axially spaced circumferential cutting operations carried out thereon, are afterwards transferred to different processing stations, for example to undergo finishing work, tests for quality control and/or packaging operations for distribution on the market.
Presently transport of belts between the various work stations provides for the aid of appropriate handling supports carrying a supporting bar in cantilevered fashion from which the belts are suspended in mutual side by side relation.
The handling supports are adapted to be easily transported, by hand or by small motor vehicles moving along predetermined paths, to bring the belts from one work station to another.
However, it is noted that in a great number of said work stations the manual intervention of an operator is necessary to carry out the transferring of the individual belts from the handling support to the various members arranged at the corresponding work station, and vice versa.
This necessity involves important down ties in production and high main-power costs. In particular it is disadvantageous because it constitutes in itself a strong restriction to increased production automation.
The presence of an operator is in fact also necessary when apparatus are involved that, should they be interlocked to means capable of automatically carrying out the above specified belt-transferring operations, could be able to operate in a completely automated manner.
It is however to be pointed out that the achievement of automatic means capable of accomplishing the desired transferring functions are hindered by a great number of technical problems.
Actually, first of all it is necessary to find a way make the belts hanging from the handling support to be easily grasped by possible gripping members associated with the apparatuses carrying out the belt workings. In this connection it is to be noted that there are particular work stations, such as the stations in which the quality control on the belts is carried out, that are designed to act selectively only on some of the belts carried by the handling support.
It is therefore necessary to find a way to separate the belts that must be submitted to the test relating to the quality control from those that on the contrary do not need to be tested.
Still with reference to the quality test, by way of example only, it is also necessary to carry out another separation between the belts that have shown unacceptable defects and those that, on the contrary, have got through the test.